When most people mention the word “pedagogy,” they are likely to think of it within a temponormative framework. It is a framework that embraces linear time and Cartesian thinking. This continues to be the most prevalent framework within Western educational contexts. A linear conceptualization of time ensures that the learning process has a beginning and an end, with predictable (and measurable) waypoints between. The causal linearity of the temponormative frame allows for the developmental procession of teaching and learning that is often best suited for transmitting explicit knowledge to learners.

The temponormative approach has worked well in the industrial era, but afforded the purposive use of technologies, can we break away from this old framework to one that is organic and synergetic, rather than mechanical — one that supports the creation of knowledge workers and innovators over factory automatons? Pekka Ihanainen (at HAAGA-HELIA and Ihanova) and I think we can. To start the discussion, in a paper we submitted for a special issue of time in Studia Paedagogica, we propose three alternatives to break us away from temponormative pedagogies: pointillist, cyclical, and overlapping. The following text is excerpted and adapted from the paper.

Pointillist learning

Elements for pointillist learning are masses of fragments and pieces – i.e., as used within Twitter messaging. They transmit, separately, beginnings for events, middle-points of events and endings of events in an order that may seem perceptibly vague. Among others, they comprise experiences, opinions, perceptions, comments, and “what if” scenarios.

The spontaneous nature of pointillist learning has always been a natural part of everyday human activity. When pointillist learning is examined from a pedagogical point of view, it opens itself as an anti- or a de-pedagogy. The greatest challenge for de-pedagogy is that we must trust that learning actually takes place, and that de-pedagogical learning is both valuable and significant. For pedagogical activity, de-pedagogy means that, as facilitators of learning, we have to give up our role as teachers and to start being and working as co-learners and peers within the pointillist environments we are involved.

Cyclical learning

In online forums, where participation (usually discussion) occurs within threads as a more or less dialogical activity, densification and diffusion of learning intensity are present to experience and take part in. The cyclical activity and learning is connected with an ability to observe intensive periods of online interaction and to join them. New competencies emerge in the perception of pulses from within emerging processes of thoughts, emotions, and understandings (among others). Often times, people wish to continue their explorations and re-understandings of pointillist events and contextualize the knowledge to better suit their own needs and interests. For this reason, we label this phenomena a re-pedagogy.

Overlapping learning

The above three frameworks do not necessarily exist exclusive of each other, but can coexist and overlap within simple or complex relationships. Overlapping may occur as 1) fragments within fragmentary entities; or, 2) waves within pulsating content processes. In regard to the former, for example, it recognizes the ability to move from pointillist activities to cyclical learning and vice versa. In regard to the latter, this includes an ability to construct new insights, conceptualizations, and contextual applications for knowledge given pulsating waves of cyclical, pointillistic and/or temponormative pedagogies. Overlapping pedagogies may be expressed through the overlapping uses of technologies. For example, in online education, microblogging (a pointillist activity) may be layered with intense activity within discussion forums (a cyclical activity).

Overlapping learning is knowledge building of everything/anything, everywhere/anywhere and at all times/anytime. In other words, overlapping learning is boundless in its scope and capabilities. When the learning of everything/anything, everywhere/anywhere and at all times /anytime is examined from pedagogical point of view, it can be seen as pedagogy of encoding. The overlapping education is therefore labeled en-pedagogy.

Our challenge

The problem is, although we are familiar with many of the technological tools that enable these pedagogies, we still view the process and the experience through the lens of temponormativity. Recognition of this framework with expanded temporal characteristics calls on us to develop new, purposive approaches that embrace and maximize the best of any configuration of de-, re-, and en-pedagogies.

Afforded the post-temponormative capabilities of online environments, how can we best leverage these multidimensional understandings of pedagogical time to facilitate multidimensional learning and meaningful new knowledge production?

Professional futurists continue to make outstanding contributions toward the development of understandings of the future, but is futures thought limited to this select group? Definitely not! With a do-it-yourself attitude, and leverage of the right resources, anybody can become an effective futurist. Here’s why:

1. Nobody knows the future – don’t trust anybody who says otherwise. The world is changing at an accelerating pace, and it’s simply getting harder and harder to imagine what will happen next, let alone 20 years from now. We are all white belts when it comes to approaching the future. We have never been there before, and it is hard to model a world that does not exist yet. What futurists provide is their “best guess” — hopefully supported by quality research and trends analyses.
2. Futuring is easier than you think. While some futures research methodologies, such as the Delphi method, require an element of professional experience and expertise, many others are easily done — and should be done — by just about anybody. Environmental scanning, for example, involves simply exposing yourself to as much data and information on a broad range as possible (i.e., reading as many newspapers as you can, daily). The futures wheel is related to mindmapping, and can be easily done within individual or group settings. Jerome Glenn and Theodore Gordon wrote an excellent volume on methodologies used by futurists, Futures Research Methodology Version 3.0 (Available at Amazon.com). For do-it-yourself futurists or those wishing to explore the field, it is an excellent resource that will get you going.
3. We are all futurists. Few activities are as natural and universal among humans and human cultures are storytelling. We use stories to share our memories and imaginations of events that have happened or will happen. We use stories to share histories, fables and myths of the past. We also use stories to share visions of and for the future — including goal setting, promises of change, narratives of how we improve ourselves, and even apocalyptic nightmares. Even in our sleep, we often dream about future scenarios. Futurists explicitly tap into our stories and the power of storytelling to share their visions and dreams. So can everybody else.
4. You can access the same information as professional futurists can. Unless if you’re divining knowledge from an isolated and highly controlled information source, the ubiquitous availability of data and information in today’s networked society mean that you can easily and cost-effectively build up your knowledge base of future trends. Moreover, you are welcome to join the same professional societies that professional futurists participate in, such as the World Future Society, providing you with the same connections and access to professional society-level knowledge they have.
5. We all create the future. Futurists do not create the future, everybody does. Time may move forward, but the future does not just “happen.” Rather we share a responsibility to ensure that the futures we create are positive (ideal outcomes for humanity, the world, etc.). Moreover, in our interconnected world, we cannot disconnect from our futures. We cannot “futureproof” an organization. Nor can we find ways to fight it as individuals. Rather we can harness our inner futurists and lead in the creation of futures of our own design.

By John Moravec (Updated May 30, 2010)

This timeline of the history of modern education provides not only a glimpse into the past and present, but plots out a plausible future history for human capital development. The future history presented is intended to be edgy, but also as a conversation starter on futures for education and future thinking in human capital development.

Although this timeline is largely U.S.-centric, the trends impacting it are global, especially as we look to the future. Please consult the glossary, below, for additional information regarding many of the themes presented. As always, we invite your feedback and suggestions for further development!

To share this timeline in your blog or website, insert the following code:

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We return from our reduced summer publication schedule — this week, we will focus on some highlights of what others talked about while we were away. Today, we start with a look at higher education:

First: Writing for the New York Times, Jacques Steinberg ponders on whether the standard length for undergraduate programs should be shortened to three years — a move that could put a dent into the cost of higher education. Building from UPenn professor Robert Zemsky’s call for three-year programs, Steinberg writes:

The idea of a three-year degree has already won support. On Monday, The Arizona Republic reported that “Arizona State University wants to develop a network of lower-priced colleges where students could earn bachelor’s degrees in just three years.” The article added that “the plan, which could cut the cost of a degree by about 40 percent, or $11,150, goes before the Arizona Board of Regents on Thursday for discussion, although the board won’t vote until later this year.”

Second: Writing for the SFGate, Carole Lloyd observes that “Online education, long an ugly duckling of the ivory towers of the world, is coming into its swan years.” Of particular interest:

Vicky Phillips, founder of GetEducated.com, which rates online education degrees and filters out diploma mills, says that in the past 12 months, she has seen an 18 percent increase in enrollment inquiries for online college degrees on her Web site – with the strongest increase in associate degrees and certificates.

Moreover, Lloyd noted that “the Department of Education released a study suggesting that a mix of online and face-to-face education produces the best learning outcomes. Exclusively online education proved slightly more effective than only face-to-face learning.”

Read more at SFGate and check out the Department of Education’s meta-analysis of the online vs. in-person spectrum.

Last fall, the prestigious publication Education Week hosted an on-line chat about the federal No Child Left Behind law. One of the panelists was David Figlio, a professor at Northwestern University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ellen Solek of East Haddam, Conn., asked if Figlio was aware “of any current research that has, or is being conducted that determines correlation (if any) between K-12 student test scores, accountability, and future success in the workplace?”

This is a magnificent question because it goes to the heart of NCLB and how it relates to every Minnesotan. The question is simple: What difference does NCLB make?

Figlio doesn’t really have an answer. First, he says this: “It’s too early to know about the effects of accountability on workplace success.” Then he says “there have been a number of studies that have linked K-12 test scores to labor market outcomes as adults,” but then adds “these papers use data that are decades old, however.”

This is a great question: Does the government’s vision of education output products that are meaningful in today’s workforce? My hunch is that research will show that NCLB is failing to produce workers of the caliber the United States needs. NCLB is great at producing automatons that can parrot back responses required for tests (or make great assembly line workers), but not creatives that will power our growing imagination- and innovation-driven economy. Who will hire graduates from the NCLB generation?

Are the old basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic relevant in the 21^st century? Or, is it time for an upgrade?

Arthur Harkins and I assembled a list of New Basics for education that can help us leapfrog to an education paradigm that is both innovative and relevant for the 21^st century and beyond. These learning outcomes are not intended to be definitive. They are, however, designed to serve as starting points for conversations on how youth-oriented human capital development systems may become more innovative and encourage learning that is more meaningful.

Youth will…

1. Think systemically: Perceiving existing patterns and constructing alternatives to them. This means that youth will think comparatively, through patterns, develop understandings of the underlying systems, and leverage the systemic patterns to meet their goals.
2. Think simulationally: Conducting “what if?” thought experiments and mental rehearsals using controlled imagination and projections. Applying imagination to simulational thinking, youth may create eye-opening stories both within and among patterns.
3. Thrive in the midst of changes, challenges, and unknowns: Developing perspectives, knowledge, and choices to cope with and leverage complexity and uncertainty. This means that youth will produce new thought tools to help them cope with increasing chaos and ambiguity in the modern world.
4. Create and manipulate alternative pasts, presents, and futures: Creating and managing virtual time; developing flexible definitions of social and personal time; and, selectively associating alternative pasts and futures with multiple presents. This means that youth will counter the tyranny of traditional perceptions of clock time through their personal time constructs, including conceptualizations of history, the present and future that can be strategically compressed and stretched.
5. Develop and respond to goals and challenges: Setting goals and objectives; detecting and anticipating impediments to success; and, designing solutions to impediments. This means that youth will take charge of their lives in more and more ways, in particular through energetic applications of their values and intelligence.
6. Understand and effectively utilize existing information: Accessing and selectively employing information in pursuit of opportunities and problem resolutions. This means that youth gravitate toward the acquisition of new information, rather than shying away from it; and that the abundance of information will be valued as a socioeconomic resource.
7. Construct and utilize personally applicable knowledge: Purposively transforming information into personally usable knowledge; building a personally styled capability to add intellectual and other forms of variety to the world; and, enhancing their decision-making options through the formation of new understandings. This means that youth will devote their lives to the construction and application of meaning, both explicit and implicit.
8. Construct and utilize new knowledge related to contexts, processes, and cultures: Perceiving, designing, and constructing real and virtual contexts suitable for specific tasks; compiling and utilizing many perspectives on given subjects; and, enhancing decision-making options. This means that youth will become increasingly capable as designers and architects of alternative knowledge foundations to improve their lives.
9. Effectively utilize current and emerging ICT systems: Staying atop the technologies that permit modern learning and economies; and, being at the forefront in the adoption and effective use of new technologies. This means that youth will expand their efforts as digital explorers and developers, and facilitate the technological adoption of technologies throughout society.
10. Acquire and assess knowledge of various global trends: Constructing “big pictures” of the world using different resources for each picture; becoming a global thinker and citizen; and, employing these viewpoints to help contextualize relatively localized problems, opportunities, goals and means. This means that youth will participate in the development of new and compelling visions for the planet and beyond.
11. Write and speak in a unique voice: Developing and utilizing personal uniqueness; applying uniqueness alone and with groups and teams; and, developing identity and character. This means that, through open, creative expression, youth may develop into exemplary representatives of democracy, freedom, and the courage to act on both.
12. Take personal responsibility for intentions and performance quality: Ethically accepting accountability for personal actions and inactions; and, constructively responding to personal and social assessments of performance quality. This means that youth will not only enjoy learning from their mistakes, but also aim to turn mistakes into successes.

Socially adapting to the pace and direction of technology changes has been a mixed bag. Sometimes, consumer pressures have the effect of driving change; sometimes consumers are indifferent; and at other times they challenge or resist a particular technological innovation. In Kurzweil’s case, some consumers are challenging the potential of technologies he’s projecting for the future.

Most challenges in advance of marketable products and services indicate ignorance more than fear. Most consumers do not read speculative (read science) fiction, and those over a certain age (about 35) usually don’t flock to science fiction movies or television shows. (No, “Lost” is not science fiction!) Hanging on to the past is easier and more defensible in the absence of known alternatives.

Where the rubber hits the road is the effects of adoption lags and challenges that affect education. While Leapfrog Institutes actively promotes the use of hand held, Web-enabled devices to facilitate 24/7 learning, schools sometimes challenge Web schools and -in the US- collect students’ tech hardware at the school door. This is a remarkable example of how ignorance of alternatives produces counter-productive and even anti-intellectual outcomes.

Kurzweil has a great projective track record. His futures are already on the way. The spoils will go to those organizations and societies that act as Beta sites for new technologies, not those who compulsively challenge, shrink away, or actively resist. The bottom line: get involved in testing and assessing new technologies, even when they are projected and not yet “real”.

eLumen Collaborative’s approach to higher education is “Let it be clear what students know and can do,” and they really mean it. Their software models a generic process (with variations) for an academic institution systematically attending to expected and actual student achievement, and individual colleges and universities, to the extent that they use it, come to resemble such an institution. The process is straightforward: faculty, working together, define the specific expected student learning outcomes throughout the institution and its programs and explicit evaluation criteria for each. When these are associated with catalog courses (again in different ways), course instructors link work that students will already be doing to these outcomes — whenever and wherever they choose to do so — and then evaluate this work through those specific lens — e.g., what has this student shown in this activity concerning his or her ability to … [whatever specific outcome(s) the faculty (and perhaps the students) have chosen]. These are judgments that faculty are already making – the difference is that each student is evaluated relative to explicit standards (rather than simply to each other) and that the software is used to record those evaluations.

Given that these data are digital and in an integrated relational database, the system can generate instantaneous reports on actual student achievement — per student, per set of students, per student learning outcome, per set of student learning outcomes, per catalog course, per program, per institution, and selected combinations of these — an array of data on student achievement that has never before been visible. Also, when a program chooses, its students (and authorized advisors) can see, in real time, his or her own data and see how their own achievement record compares to any set of expected student learning outcomes that a program or the institution has devised. Likewise, the appropriate committee can see how any defined set of students stands relative to the same define set of expectations. Perhaps the best analogy is the point-of-sale technology that has revolutionized the retail industry.

What if this were adopted in PreK-12, home schooling, corporate professional development, etc.?

To be is to do

So Do We?

It is just good teaching

Games taught me that modeling environments and taking on the roles are powerful ways to teach and learn.

Piaget talked about roles as assimilation. You try on the role and see what part of the character is you.

Gibson talked about environment and context, with affordances and constraints. What the world gives you for advice, warning, limitation, and opportunity.

These ideas are present in embodiment and how we might contextualize our curriculum as an activity system.

One of the big lessons from games is design. Good learning is by design. A teacher, like a game designer creates the environment where we learn.

We are already attempting to embody what we teach in purposeful ways with Professional Content Magnets in our secondary schools. In Minneapolis we have Automotive, Cosmetology, Medicine, Business, and Fine Arts—just to name a couple. What we often don’t do is to integrate the abstractions of the core competencies from the traditional content areas into the context of the professional development. I have noticed that the many of the magnets still teach school the same way. Students still go to math and use a math text book, and they learn Math the same way they do in Auto as they do in Medical — they just have some specialized classes and placement programs that allow students to specialize.

We often do not teach our content in the context of doing the professional work. We do not find Algebra in the everyday world of Engineering, we teach the formulas as content rather than showing how a formula can be used for building a model for an engineering project. There is a new kind of engineering for schools – reverse engineering.

Some schools and teachers do this when they design their curriculum. There are books on it and we have explored this idea going all the way back to John Dewey .

Can we teach physics with an internal combustion engine? Dewey thought so.

Games ask us to take on the roles and then teach us to do things in the context of that role in the simulated environment.

That is embodiment.

Schools can do this too.

We can structure reflection to connect experience to our abstracted tradition of curriculum to generalize and transfer.

If you are playing as a doctor, you will do the things that doctors do.

And as you are acting like a doctor, the game gives you clues to achieve a win-state, in the form of feedback and performance assessment.

Games provide performance assessment in real time embodied in the context of what a doctor does and how a doctor gets feedback. So you learn to be a doctor by playing in a simulated world as a doctor. In the process, you are assessed on your performance by the game. It is how they keep score!

In games students are scored based upon criteria for performance that is built into the activity. The assessment is the activity.

This is different from taking tests on the content and elements of performance in print based tests and questionnaires. Thorndike anyone?

This is what games do when they are well-designed, and this is what curriculum can do when it takes these steps as well. Good teaching is good teaching, but often our teachers are not given the opportunity or resources to create hands-on experience for their students with the content built into the context of doing in the world. We tried to do this a number of years ago with the Profiles of Learning and Performance Packages here in Minnesota, but we just did not do a good job of helping our teachers do it.

Instead, we are writing a paper about what doctors do, “because this is what we do in English.” We are preparing for a time when you can be a doctor. You must write first in school, and then you can apply to medical school. Why are we withholding the fun?

I am sure you are saying to yourself that this reminds you of apprenticeship programs. And “what about the value of a good liberal arts education?”

I am with you. I originally wanted to be a philosopher! I still try to connect great books with issues we face in society. My own eight grader helped me by telling me that “sonic the hedgehop is like Odysseus Mr. Dubbels, he is trying to get home.” We also made our own version of the Odyssey– studying it to make a game. The kids said that Odyssseus was put off the bus (Poseidon Bus Lines anyone?) for being arrogant and had to walk home in a modern day, urban Odyssey.

Actions speak louder than word when it comes to learning.

And words are what many students’ days are full of: in the texts, in the lecture, in homework.

I like words, but it is important that I have experience to write and read about to connect. Something purposeful and fun.

I am here to tell you, you don’t need a computer to make learning environments like this. You can construct modern Odysseys.

I am not saying that what we are doing in school is wrong. Good teaching is good teaching, and there are many things I like to do and teach that have nothing to do with video games. I am an English teacher, and I like to read. I like to write, and I like big ideas.

Shouldn’t we be considering how we might work to teach the words-words-words-abstraction-as-content curriculum
in a more tangible way, that allows students to use the skill sets of an historian or botanist with reading, writing, numeracy, technology, and scientific reasoning built-in, as a botanist or historian would do it in the context of their job?

Imagine being Indiana Jones. Would you prefer to be Indy on a mission or in the lecture hall? I think I like the whip for jumping over a canyon better than using it as a teacher.

We can teach traditional content areas and standards as elements of embodied practice. Most of us use reading, writing, and numeracy in the context of our professions and recreation, not as we do in English class or Geometry.

When was the last time you took a content-test at work?

Subject matter expertise comes out in situated performance in my experience. Games are actually built to teach and assess through performance. In addition, games demand mastery and continuous improvement in pursuit of winning the game and even provide replay, scoring, and commentary!

What if we built curriculum in the form of games?

Can you imagine getting an instant replay with color commentary like you get in Madden 2007 on your test? In games, you have to perform with enough mastery to move on, or level up. Games do the assessment as part of their programming.

You may be asking now, “But are there games that can do what a text book does?

“What about the teacher?”

My answer: “do you want your kids learning from textbooks?”

Textbooks are great, but limited in what they can present. And they may serve a valid purpose as a reference point for exploring issues in the contexts of analysis, history of what others have done and thought, as well as jumping-off-points for more serious inquiry and investigation—just like the Wikipedia.

Yes, I know, the wikipedia is only as good as the posters, but at least there is discussion and room for published public dissent on the article in the context of the webpage where the information is posted. Can you do this with a text book?

My work as a media specialist gave me an opportunity to take a serious look at what we were doing with books and how we were using them. I was surprised that my library was more of a repository of relics, curiosities, and histories – as well as some great fiction and how-to-books.

What I was thinking as I weeded out geography texts on Yugoslavia and the USSR, was that much of what we purchase in non-fiction texts actually work better on the World Wide Web. In fact, what makes the WWW better is that we can find starting points for research and inquiry like the Wikipedia; we can read a variety of sites that might inform us and create contrast and opposing viewpoints, as well offer a variety of media opportunities in the form of video on demand, live web-camera viewing, links to other sites, community forums for discussion and community, as well as interactive media like games. And the WWW is generally updated. Not like the books on the USSR and Yugoslavia.

We should be moving beyond the static curriculum of text books.

Games can provide the context and action for our content knowledge in a situated context—almost as good as being there.

Games can do this whether they are computer games, or games that use paper, pencil, and dice.

Further, what games do well is provide context and necessitate performance. I am not the first person to say this and many more have said it better. The big idea here is that games represent an opportunity to be in a role, doing things that people in those roles do, in places where they do them, and then get assessed in that performance. A nice book on this – I like books—is David Shaffer’s book and his take on Epistemic Games. What David proposes is that there are beliefs, acts, and contexts for what the professions do.

A game I like that does this is Global Conflicts Palestine. I have been using this game with middle school students in Minneapolis at Richard Green-Central K8 school to teach about being a journalist; teach about issues in Jerusalem that affect us all as a planet; and issues in composition such as thesis and supporting details, the use of data collection, writing to inform, and rhetorical situations like writer’s purpose, audience, topic, and context. The cool thing is, in this game you play the journalist and you deal with these issues as a journalist. And this includes the creation of the articles from informants you have quoted in the game. You have to do the things I teach in English class, but while playing as a journalist.

Yes, Playing. That typically means fun is included there too!

There are still two unanswered questions here:

“What about the textbooks?” and “what about the teachers?”

Texts can tell a story, provide relevant reference, as well as provide models for how we create texts. I do prefer reading fiction from a book. There will always be a place for texts. But should they be our primary tools?

Teachers become coaches, resources, and designers of instruction. They help students through the experience of becoming. Help students set goals. Assist them in connecting their experience and structuring reflection. They become more connected.

These are not new ideas either, but they have not been implemented. Texts and teachers are often the focus of the classroom experience, even though experience and common sense tell us that student learning should be the focus. Teachers can create contexts, structure reflection, and provide resources like text books and other references to further the growth and learning of their students. They become the designers of content systems, instructional environments, or whatever you want to call them. We do need support in this. As teachers, we are not islands or independent states. Administrators, school boards, other teachers, parents, students, schools of education, game companies, philanthropic entities ( my email is below if you are a philanthropic entity) can all help.

And like I said, many of us do this now. We use cooperative learning, projects, performance, experience, and encourage students to have wonderful ideas. And this is what creates knowledge and innovation. What our country was built upon. But maybe we can take this a step further and become student growth centered. Games can help us do that.

In the next entry, I will be going into aspects of games and how they might be used to extend learning time outside of the classroom and bring the lives of our learners in. Games provide a great opportunity for distance learning. My last post will be a description of how I taught with games and some outcomes, and maybe most importantly, how I was able to get the equipment and make it happen. And to get to the point: I had no grants. I had no special resources. I bought no equipment.